Bottle Caps, Buttons and a Bevy of…

Wednesday is my busy (I should say busier) day, so I don’t really have time to do any blogging, so it’s back at it today. It was interesting to see how people answered Tuesday’s question, which was:

Do you collect anything or have a particular hobby that you are passionate about?

It seems there’s a lot of diversity in what people like to do or collect. Gardening, knitting, reading, listening to music, exercise, the list goes on and on when it comes to hobbies that people have. Collecting seems to fall into the same boat. Sean started collecting bottle caps a few years ago and now he has hundreds of them of all different types. For me personally, my collecting has always been about baseball. I started out collecting baseball cards when I was a kid, as a lot of people do, but I have kept it up for many years now. While the cards that I had as a kid are long gone (thanks Mom!), I have been collecting sets of cards for over 30 years now and have somewhere in the neighborhood of about 30,000 cards right now. When I first started high school, a friend of mine turned me on to collecting autographs of baseball players and I have been doing that ever since as well. I got a lot of them through the mail over the years, and I still do, and I acquired many by going to card shows and meeting players at the stadium during batting practice, and also by trading with some other people over the Internet. I have about 6,000 autographs now, including every living baseball Hall of Famer and many who are not around any more. A lot of players today aren’t as willing to sign autographs anymore (at least for free anyway) and I do still get some in the mail and I don’t mind paying a few dollars for a player to sign if the money is going to a charity. I do have a few autographs of people who aren’t baseball-related, like Muhammad Ali, Alan Alda, George Burns, Bill Bradley, Wilt Chamberlain and a few others.My two favorites are Smokey Joe Wood, who was the first autograph I ever got. At the time, he was the only living player who had played before 1910 and was a great pitcher for the Red Sox around the turn of the 20th century, and Ted Williams, who I always consider as the greatest hitter who ever lived. I tried for many years to get Ted Williams autograph with no real luck. Years ago, while he was still alive, Michelle surprised me with his autograph for Christmas one year on a photo of him. Would I ever consider selling any of it? Probably not, unless I really needed to do it. I leave that for Sean to do some day. For now, I don’t think about the value of all that stuff; I just like to look at them now and then so I get the memory of these guys playing or the memory of when I met them. It sounds corny, but hey, that’s my hobby.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to answer and a special thanks to Natalie Maines, who answered me on Twitter, although she wasn’t very specific in her answer. Anyway, let’s move on to today’s question. I am getting closer to finishing my story, “Below the Surface” and hope to have it done this weekend. I am a big fan of horror movies and horror/thriller fiction, and with all this writing it got me thinking about some horror movies, so I thought I would pose this question:

What is the scariest movie you have ever seen?

Some people aren’t into scary movies so they may not have seen one that fits, but I think just about everyone who watches movies has probably seen one that fits the bill. What have you seen that makes you leave the light on that night, or double-check the locks on the doors, or maybe even keeps you up listening for all creaks in the house? Think about it and let me know. You can answer on here, or on Facebook or on Twitter. I’ll also ask some people on Twitter and see how they respond. I’ll post my answer tomorrow.

That just about covers everything for now. Time for some work, some cleaning and Sean and I want to go for a walk too, so there’s still lots to be done. I think there’s always lots to be done for everyone, I guess it’s just how much you want to do certain things, but anyway, we’ll save that question for another day. Enjoy your day and don’t forget to do something creative today!